Each of our identities is a collage of culture, genetics, and memory.
With these collages, I am reexamining my childhood in the South in the 60s to investigate the influences of embedded segregation, a specific model of womanhood, and a deep and fraught tie to home and place shared by many folks from the South. ADD|MIX|FOLD functions as a visual memoir, wherein I’ve sewn and cut into my photographs to create objects that reference the influence the past holds on our lives in the present. The title comes from a family pound cake recipe, and serves as a metaphor for how we blend and slice up stories and memories to make sense of ourselves during these extraordinary, frenetic, ephemeral times.
These multimedia pieces combine photography with thread, fabric, beads, and buttons to complicate notions of static or singular identity. Sewing allows me to layer and challenge the image, to explore how memory can be fictionalized, photographic, and emotional. The work is intentionally tactile, handmade, to push back against the ephemeral nature of digital and AI generated imagery. These pieces are one of a kind; these pieces are defiantly human. By paying homage to traditional women’s crafts, ones I learned myself as a girl, this project bittersweetly anticipates a future where we may have little tangible evidence of our domestic lives.
BIO: Nancy Richards Farese is a photographer, artist, writer and social entrepreneur. Founder of PhotoPhilanthropy (2009), and CatchLight (2015), her work explores the role of the arts and media in civil society and leveraging the power of visual storytelling for the social good.
Nancy is an award-winning social documentary photographer, working with social development agencies to address social and political conditions globally. She has photographed with CARE International as a Photo Ambassador, with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, RefugePoint, and The Carter Center among others. She is the author of Potential Space: A Serious Look at Child’s Play, published by MW Editions, 2021 and I Still Speak Southern in My Head, 2024. Her photography and writing have been widely published.
Nancy is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and The Harvard Kennedy School. She was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at The Harvard Kennedy School where she was teaching, writing, and researching the evolution of visual journalism and its impact on policy and academic discourse. Nancy is a 2023 MFA graduate of Maine Media Collage where she completed Add|Mix|Fold as her thesis work. She serves on the board of Southwire Company, the NPR Foundation, F3 Charitable Foundation and as Board Chair for CatchLight. She is originally from Carrollton, GA, and currently lives in Marin County, CA
